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A minivan driver's illegal U-turn sent a livery car flying into a crowded Bronx bus stop yesterday, in a horrific crash that killed a 76-year-old great-grandfather and injured at least six other people, police said.
Witnesses said the sickening impact in Kingsbridge left sprawled pedestrians screaming in pain, with shattered glass embedded in their faces and limbs, and a maimed woman shouting, "Where's my foot? Where's my foot?"
Marcelino Adraneda, 76, a retired textile-firm owner who had immigrated from the Philippines in 1997, died at St. Barnabas Hospital.
Police said the tragedy unfolded at 11 a.m., when a double-parked gray minivan driven by Belle Rudulph made the U-turn along West Kingsbridge Road and turned east toward University Avenue.
It collided with a dark-blue Lincoln livery car, which then careened into the bus shelter.
The livery driver, Pedro Marte, said later that he lost control and all he remembered was saying "Oh, my God!" as he plowed into the bus stop.
"Everyone was just screaming and running. It was terrible," said Angie Polanco, 25, who heard a booming sound and saw the gruesome aftermath.
Passer-by Angel Encarnacio said he saw a man with a crushed foot pinned by the cab against the shelter.
A woman on the ground pleaded for help, but "there was nothing I could do. She was all full of blood," Encarnacio said.
Adraneda's grieving daughter, Ofelia Bernardo, said she rushed down from her apartment after her son saw the horrific accident and called her.
"He told me my father's leg was already cut off," she told The Post.
"My son saw him being pinned. He was crying, 'Mom you have to come down, something happened to Lolo.' "
Friends told her "to cover my face and not look at my father."
She said her dad "was a friend to everybody."
Marte "was sitting in his cab" when police arrived, said eyewitness Pedro Jaquez, 33. "He had his head in his hands until the cops got him out and put him in the ambulance."
He and six pedestrians were rushed to hospitals. Among the most seriously injured was a 40-year-old woman whose left foot was amputated, a 71-year-old woman whose right leg was crushed, and a 48-year-old man who suffered a fractured lung and broken rib, authorities said.
Cops took Rudulph, who escaped injury, to a nearby restaurant, where a worker recalled, "He could barely talk. He had trouble answering questions clearly."
Rudulph was ticketed for making an illegal turn, the NYPD said.
A police source said, "If it were up to me, I would have had the guy in handcuffs and he would have been arrested. But the DA doesn't want to entertain that."
Hours after the crash, a man who identified himself as the livery driver's son told a friend of Adraneda, "I just want to say I'm sorry about what happened."
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